➵WHAT IN APPLICATION 🤠

[legionnaires]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Keith
AGE: 30
JOURNAL: flotilla
IM / EMAIL: Email | Icarus #6378 [Discord]
PLURK: redfielding
RETURNING: Returning

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Keith
CHARACTER AGE: 20
SERIES: Voltron: Legendary Defender
CHRONOLOGY: Post Season 6
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Open for randomization

BACKGROUND: Keith’s character and history are a central point in plot revelations in later parts of the series. When the series starts we know next to nothing about his past or his heritage. The adventures of the Paladins of Voltron begin on Earth, where space travel is must more developed than ours and a mission to Kerberos, one of Pluto’s moons, results in the disappearance of the exploration team sent out there. It is the return of Shiro, the mission’s pilot, that kickstarts the events of the series as it brings the team together and leads to a series of circumstances that brings them to deep space and the Castle of Lions. Charged by a newly awoken Princess of Altea, a planet destroyed some 10,000 years before, to help protect the universe there is little left for the Paladins to do but agree to serve.

For Keith, this isn’t the end to having crazy twists and turns in his life. Having been orphaned at a young age due to the death of his father, and knowing next to nothing of his mother, Keith has always questioned who he was. It isn’t until the second season that he finally begins to receive answers. This is mostly due to the team meeting with a Galran that had helped free Shiro from his imprisonment—a man named Ulaz who claimed to be part of a resistance group known as the Blades of Marmora, and who held a blade that resembled the one left to Keith by his mother. Needing answers, Keith joins Shiro on a mission to meet with the Blades where is then challenged to prove that he is worthy of the blade he carries. Keith manages to activate the blade by eventually offering to surrender it, an activation that can only occur if Keith were to have Galran blood. This revelation causes some tension with Keith and other members of the team, particularly Allura due to the war with the Galra having caused her significant losses.

Ultimately, it is a revelation that he can not reflect or focus on as the team is prepared to work with the Blades and other allies to take down Zarkon and his empire. Ultimately, it is a feat they manage, but at the cost of their leader, Shiro. And this is where Keith’s life takes another unexpected and unwanted turn as Keith is forced to take on the leadership role he never asked for and honestly didn’t want after he is the only one to be accepted by the Black Lion. Unsure of himself and his ability to lead, the coordination of the team is strained, especially as Keith becomes obsessed with the need to take out Lotor, Zarkon’s son, to suspend the power the Galra have over the galaxy.

The team does, eventually, recover Shiro—or well, who they believe is Shiro—once again bringing strain to Keith’s leadership. While Shiro abdicates his role as the Black Paladin, he still tries to command from the Castle of Lions, often in contradiction to Keith’s own calls. With Keith’s role as leader of Voltron under question, he seems to be continually spending more and more time with the Blades of Marmora than with the team—often putting them at risk in battle and on missions. Eventually, this leads to Shiro having to regain control of the Black Lion…and Keith leaving to fully join the Blades.

Keith’s time with the Blades is marked with losses and hard lessons. It is following some time among them that Keith joins the collective effort to regain control of over a third of the Galran Empire. During Voltron’s blitz on Naxzela and other planets, a ship commanded by Haggar threatens to wipe out everything with a single shot. Left with no choice, Keith makes the decision to make a suicide run at the ship’s shields, hoping to give the others a shot at taking it down. He is saved at the last minute by the appearance of Lotor, who wishes to make a deal with the Paladins of Voltron.

Keith does not return to Voltron at this point, but instead continues his work with the Blades. Normally operating as part of a team, Keith is eventually given a mission he must complete solo—retrieving a valued asset from Galra command and relieving her from her cover. As the pair escape, Krolia reveals that she is Keith’s mother—the one he never knew and felt abandoned by. After pulling his mother from her current assignment, the pair proceed to follow her lead on a pure strain of Quintessence—a lead that brings them to the Quantum Abyss, a place where dark stars pull in all surrounding matter and disrupt the normal flow of space-time itself. Having their ship attacked early in the journey, Keith and Krolia try to continue their journey, eventually hitchhiking on the back of a space-whale that creates its own atmosphere. They eventually make it through the Quantum Abyss after two years travelling on the back of this creature. It’s important to note that these two years only occurred in the Quantum Abyss—outside of it, barely a few weeks have passed.

After making it through the Quantum Abyss, Keith and his mother (and his cosmic wolf) stumble upon an Altean girl on the outskirts of a colony. Romelle, the Altean, explains her plight to them—how her friends, parents, and even her brother were taken to another colony by Lotor, how her brother reappeared, half-dead, and how she knows something isn’t right. Their investigation leads them to find that Lotor has been extracting Quintessence from these Alteans—a fact he has been hiding from Voltron, who he is now working with, and Allura who’s trust he has earned. They reveal this to the team, and to Allura, which leads to them turning on Lotor. However, before anything can be done the ship is breached by those under Haggar’s employ and Shiro is brought under Haggar’s control to bring Lotor to her.Keith follows Shiro on his own, eventually confronting him at the station for Project Kuron, one that Haggar used to clone Shiro for her own uses.

Keith proceeds to fight Shiro in this station. During this fight several aspects of Keith’s Galran heritage make themselves known under duress—fangs, slit eyes, and a yellow tone around his irises. Ultimately, Shiro reveals that the team might be dead, and that he plans to take Keith with him in this fight. As the station begins to collapse, Keith and Shiro are thrown into the void of space, heading towards the surface of the planet beneath them. Somehow, in their descent towards the planet, Keith manages to connect with the Black Lion and finds himself in the Astral Plane—a manifestation of Black’s consciousness. Here he is met by Shiro’s spirit, who reveals that the Shiro he has been fighting, the one the team has known since he was found in season three, is a clone. He, the real Shiro, died in the fight with Zarkon. Black managed to preserve his spirit, but his body is gone. After this revelation, Keith awakes with a start in the cockpit of Black, an unconscious clone close to death on the floor behind him.
Keith contacts the team after the results of his fight with Shiro’s clone, warning them that Lotor is nearby, heading for their direction and the gate to the Quintessence Field. The team agree to destroy the gate, and to hold off Lotor for as long as they can while they await Keith to make his way back to them.It isn’t until Keith fully connects with the Black Lion, under tutelage by Shiro’s spirit in the Astral Plane, that he is able to unlock the full abilities of the Black Lion, which allows him to reach the team in record time. And just in time to face down Lotor.

In the team’s final confrontation with Lotor, they are forced to enter the Quintessence Field to even stand a chance against him in the Syncline ships. As Voltron becomes overloaded by Quintessence, the team begins to experience the corruptive force of unlimited energy. Allura calls for them to stop fighting, redirecting the excess energy in a final shot towards Lotor. The team is forced to leave the Quintessence Field, and to leave Lotor abandoned behind, or risk being torn apart. After leaving the Quintessence Field, the team is faced with another harsh reality. Lotor’s use of the Syncline ships began to tear at the fabric of reality. This tear would only continue to expand until it saw to the end of everything. The only way to reverse it was through a catastrophic reaction—and explosion through the use of overloading the Castle of Lion’s teladov system. Basically, it was the release of an atom bomb in space.

Now castle-less, but the danger to the fabric of reality safely averted, the team took refuge on a nearby planet to see to the status of Shiro. Keith uses this moment to explain just what happened to their former leader, and how his soul now resides in the Black Lion. Using her knowledge of Altean Alchemy, Allura was able to draw out Shiro’s spirit and place it in the clone abandoned by Haggar. It is through this that Shiro is saved. However, the team is still left with the question of what they should do next. It is Pidge’s revelation that her father, Sam Holt, has the plans to rebuild the Castle of Lions. Sam Holt, who returned to Earth not too long after his rescue from Zarkon. This, of course, leads the Paladins to the conclusion that their next adventure would be to chart a course for Earth—a course home.

PERSONALITY:
When first meeting Keith, he can seem hotheaded and temperamental—a disposition he shared with the Red Lion when they were initially paired. Because of this, many can find Keith hard to work with due to the fact his nature leads to impulsive decisions and impassioned outbursts. This can be seen best in the early seasons, where Keith had several outbursts regarding needing to leave Earth to protect it, needing to fight the Galra, needing to meet with the Blades of Marmora…a lot of it is based on what Keith feels in a necessity. This also lends itself to the fact that Keith is an orphan, his mother having left when he was just a baby in order to protect him and his father dying under mysterious circumstances when he was a young kid. Being forced into the foster system obviously damaged Keith’s ability to trust, not only in others but in himself as well. He isn’t one to open up about any of this, and when he was younger, Shiro was the only one to try and see past the walls he was already building—which is why he trusts the older paladin so much.

Keith has a firm sense of justice and the actions one should take to achieve it. However, his hotheadedness often manifests as bullheadedness—a stubbornness that makes him unwilling to back down from confrontation even when presented with arguments from his teammates. This often results in Keith either being too far out of his element (as was the case with his fight with Zarkon) or being pressed to achieve impressive feats (such as using Lotor’s own ships against him by dodging a shot from one with inexplicable timing).

It’s important to note that this stubbornness can sometimes also make Keith miss crucial details in battle, even though he is normally perceptive when given the space to have a clear head. This can be seen in how he manages to harm the Balmera while trying to destroy enemies on its surface, or the missteps he takes in the confrontation with Lotor during his first stint as the Black Paladin. Keith can be perceptive, but pressure and the almost obsessive need to achieve what he believes is justice can cause him to make these errors. Outside of moments of intense pressure, or when the heat of the battle isn’t forcing him to rely solely on instinct that can be misguided stubbornness, Keith’s perceptiveness can make him out to be the cautious tactician he has the capability to be.

While all of these traits are certainly part of what makes Keith, well, Keith, it is important to note that he is at a point of growth in the series. Having reunited with his mother and having spent two years of warped time reconnecting with her, he has seemed to reach a point of mental and emotional maturity that may allow him to move past some of the more negative parts of his personality (namely his temper). This is evident in how readily Keith stepped back into the role as the Black Paladin, commanding the team with ease and finesse that wasn’t present before. He’s more confident in his abilities to lead because he is more sure of himself because he was able to finally understand his past, his heritage, and the choices his mother made early in his life—and come to terms with it.

POWER:
Paladin of Voltron: Keith has returned Voltron and resumed his role as a Paladin. He’ll be returning in red Paladin armor with the Black bayard, which manifests as a sword. He also will have the Black Lion who will be slightly bigger than the Red Lion but still lion sized. The Lions, being weapons, are able to defend and attack. The Black Lion primarily uses lasers and a jawblade, which would be like a knife or bb gun attack at best in its reduced state. The Black Lion also has wings that gives it a speed boost in space flight.

Galra Heritage: Keith is, from what we can gather, roughly half galra. Those traits only seem to come out currently with intense emotion (yellow eyes, sharp fangs), however, he does retain the fangs at least in some form. He also carries with him the luxite blade passed on to him from his mother, which can change shape to the users will so long as they have Galran blood – it usually presents as a small dagger or a short sword.

Cosmic Wolf: On his two-year mission with his mother, they end up rescuing a cosmic wolf who has the ability to teleport short distances. It does not, however, understand the concept of "fetch". Keith is likely still training it in some capacity, but it has not been shown to actively attack, or participate in battles thus far.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉

COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

I'm starting to really hate the concept of time.

[ So it's only been a month? There's a long pause, and he's really glad that he remembered to just turn on the voice feature. ]

Well it's Keith. Paladin of Voltron. I'm back, I guess. Shiro, Lance, Allura... are you still here?

[ He's not sure if he's prepared for the answer, the tone in his voice a little more then questioning, but if it's only been a month then... maybe he'll be lucky. ]

I'll see you at the beach house if you are.

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: Keith on the TDM

FINAL NOTES: I am re-apping Keith with him having memories of his previous time in MoM. During his time here, he worked with several missions--most of which have lead up to the current Mars plot, and had several odd jobs involving his defensive and offensive fight skills. Personality-wise, MoM's events were leading him down a similar path he ultimately took in canon--one of self-confidence, calm under pressure, and self-assured leadership. His time in MoM was interspersed with various canon updates (the last being from the end of season 4), and because of that his arc in canon really does reflect that in MoM--the only difference being that his growth in canon came from settling his past with his mother rather than through his own actions as it was in MoM previously.